I’ve been using Macintosh computers ever since I remember. I grew up using MacPaint, playing Toxic Raveen, Marathon, and arguing with my friends over loving Macs more than PCs.

That was a long time ago and the arguments are long behind, yet today I’m still sitting in front of an Apple who someone’s taken a bite out of; writing on a MacBook Pro with my iPhone on my desktop. Watching NetFlix on my AppleTV while my docs are backing up onto my Time Capsule.

I normally don’t sell anything in my posts here on Think Artificial. In fact, I’ve never done so nor allowed anyone else to. However, this is uniquely related to our topic of interest and may benefit some lucky readers.

I’m considering selling a few of my augmented reality domains; originally intended to be put to use, other projects have gotten in the way. It seems a shame to leave them parked. So, here they are.

The domain list

Augmented-Realities.net

AugmentedRealityMobile.net

AugmentedRealityMobile.org

AugmentedRealityOnline.com

AugmentingRealities.com

HandheldAugmentedReality.com

iPhoneAugmentedReality.net

MMORPGAugmentedReality.com

Make an offer

Contact me directly to make me an offer on any of these domains. I intend to keep prices fair. I want to see them go to deserving individuals and startups.

I reserve the right to accept or deny offers based on personal preference.

Correct prediction

Undetermined

Wrong prediction

Today we’re launching a special page to store past and present predictions regarding future technology developments. At the moment all are in the area of augmented reality. Below is a list of new predictions; the complete list can be found on the new Predictions page. The page can also be accessed through its link in Think Artificial’s header-menu.

The notification came yesterday and what a delightful wake-up call. I knew there’d been about a thousand submissions last year, and that they’d had to make a delay this one due to an increase, so it was quite unexpected. (Each category is drastically different—but it still makes my head spin to be on a list with Ars Technica! Awesome.)

My thanks go out to the judges, bows to the fellow finalists and best wishes all around!

Just a quick note about the newly created Facebook page for Think Artificial. Followers can upload images & videos, share links and have some discussions. Facebook’s ‘discussion board’ sucks about as much as the economy, but posting comments on individual pics, links and vids could be fun. If you’re interested then please be my guest to join and post some cool artificial stuff.

Dear readers of Think Artificial—my apologies for not having posted sooner. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, there are some things weighing on my shoulders. This is, among school and other things, a burning desire to help rebuild on Iceland’s ashes of economic collapse.

Only yesterday the police employed gas to disperse a crowd for the first time since 1949 when Iceland joined NATO. The people are protesting the government’s poor management in the months since the collapse.

I’ve been brooding on ideas of how to introduce innovation as a key component in the new society. This is not an easy thing to do—Iceland is drenched in history-based economic models to make decisions. When that model goes too far, as it has royally, it does not favor innovation, startup companies and extensive research; businesses tend to put their money where its safe, not into the abyss of new ideas that may- or may not revolutionize the world.

This compels me to do something; try to help steer this country into something less extreme, more innovative. I’ve been doing presentations about how special, unique and rebellious ideas can bring about great things if done right. There’s much more planned for 2009, and also: I’m learning about politics—can you believe that?

There’s a lot on my mind—but Think Artificial is not dead. Or if it is, then it’s only because there’s the new Think Artificial of 2009 waiting to take its place. I hope to see you and your comments around. I humbly thank you for reading in 2008 and for sticking around!

We’ll now be able to maintain better visual and personalized presence around Think Artificial. After some CSS struggling due to discrepancies between Firefox and Safari page rendering, I’ve finished implementing Gravatars on the site! (I’m sorry IE6 users, I don’t have time to test and accommodate a broken browser — please get Firefox).

If your comment shows up with a gray person like the third comment above, it means you’ll have to get yourself a Gravatar. If you haven’t heard of Gravatars, or Globally Recognized Avatars, they’re a service that allows you to upload and associate an avatar with your e-mail address. Since they’re in use by many popular websites, it’ll spare you some time when commenting or creating accounts there—all you’ll have to do is enter your email address and they’ll pop up automatically (email encrypted via the MD5 algorithm). For the record, the people on the pic with me above are Gnorb and Esther — both of which run great blogs.

Following that step I was faced with whether I should flag the number of subscribers on the site. To set myself a goal I decided I wouldn’t reveal the number until it reached 300. And now it has happened.

Subscribers to TA have been holding at around 300 for about a month now—subscribers being people that are either subscribed to the site’s RSS feed or via email. Not counting those that visit the site regularly.

My thanks to everyone who’s been reading. You’re the reason I’m still at it.

Last month I invited readers to apply for invitations to Twine.com, one of the major players in this first wave of semantic web applications. Twine is still in a private, invitation only beta; meaning it’s an incomplete product under heavy development (Twine intro). Due to this I set some conditions for invitees last time. But as promised, here’s the second round of invitations — this time unconditional (I know you’re all ‘telligent and enthusiastic).

Simply leave a short comment on this post if you’re interested in giving Twine a spin. An invitation will be sent to the email address you specify in the comment’s field.